Killing an already dead man to make sure that he is in fact dead. For example, you might snap someone's spine, then just to make sure, you drop the person down an elevator shaft. A staple of Steven Seagal movies.

One of the many innovations of 80s Action is the corpse kill. ... In the case of Tommy Lee Jones, Seagal beats his man, slices him up with a knife, pushes his eyeball back into his brain (Jones is still alive at this point) then drives the knife into the top of Jones' skull, right up to the handle. The corpse then gets thrown headfirst through a monitor and electrocuted. You know those scenes where it looks like the bad guy is dead, but then he gets back up and musters one more cheap shot? You don't see any of those in Seagal flicks.